Be Proud to be a Tester.  Be proud to be a Passionate tester. We are no way less to others, till we do our duty properly. We all are here by choice, not by chance or by any compulsions.

Think positive. Start testing the application by intend of finding bugs/errors. Don’t think beforehand that there will not be any bugs in the application. If you test the application by intention of finding bugs you will definitely succeed to find those  subtle bugs  also.

Software testing is fun, enjoy it – Stay calm, be focused, follow all processes and enjoy testing. See how interesting software testing is. I must say it’s addictive for some people.

We feel very proud if we can find bugs in the application developed by development team.

Get involved from the beginning – It is an advice to all the testers, to participate in all the activities regarding application development. Ask your lead or manager to get you involved in design discussions/meetings from the beginning. This is more applicable for small teams without QA lead or manager. It is a good sign that you are very sincere & interested to work.

Make sure you get noticed at work – Sometimes your lead may not present the true picture of you to your manager or company management. In such cases you should continuously watch the moments where you can show your performance to top management.

Try to elevate yourself by participating in meetings & client calls.

Keep notes on everything – Keep notes of daily new things learned on the project. This could be just simple commands to be executed for certain task to complete or complex testing steps, so that you don’t need to ask same things again and again to fellow testers or developers.

Continuous learning – Never stop learning. Explore better ways to test application. Learn new automation tools like Selenium, QTP or any performance testing tool. Nowadays performance testing is the hot career destination for software testers! Have this skill under your belt.

Go beyond requirement testing. Test application for what it is not supposed to do. You task is not simply testing;

If possible identify the different ways to design application or even a particular page. Give work to your creative mind.

Keep developers away from test environment. This is required step to detect any configuration changes missing in release or deployment document. Sometimes developers do some system or application configuration changes but forget to mention those in deployment steps. If developers don’t have access to testing environment they will not do any such changes accidentally on test environment and these missing things can be captured at the right place?

360 degree testing approach – To hunt down software defects think from all perspectives. Find all possible information related to the application under test apart from your SRS documents. Use this information to understand the project completely and apply this knowledge while testing.

Learn to analyze your test results thoroughly. Do not ignore the test result. The final test result may be ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ but troubleshooting the root cause of ‘fail’ will lead you to the solution of the problem. Testers will be respected if they not only log the bugs but also provide solutions.

Learn to maximize the test coverage  every time you test any application. Though 100 percent test coverage might not be possible still you can always try to reach near it.

Admit mistakes but be confident about whatever tasks you did – Avoid doing the same mistake again. This is the best method to learn and adapt to new things.

Try to automate daily routine tasks – Save time and energy by automating daily routine task no matter how small those tasks are.

E.g. If you deploy daily projectbuilds manually, write a batch script to perform the task in one click.

While writing test cases, write test cases for intended functionality first i.e. for valid conditions according to requirements.

Then write test cases for invalid conditions. This will cover expected as well unexpected behavior of application under test.

Testing teams should share best testing practices, experience with other teams in their organization.

Increasing conversation with developers we can get know a lot about the product and we can understand the requirement in-depth which in turn will helps in finding more defects.

Written & Oral communication – It is very much essential for the Testers.In order to author the test cases properly one should have writing skills & to attend the client calls or gather requirements, oral communication is very much essential.

Write clear, descriptive, unambiguous bug report. Do not only provide the bug symptoms but also provide the effect of the bug and all possible solutions.

Don’t forget testing is a creative and challenging task.

Exploration is important Keep on reading books, white papers, case studies related to software testing. Never be idle. If you time, just go through some testing related sites and gather the useful information.

It depends on Individuals skill and experience, how they handle this challenging Testing Profession.